Chemical production processes generally employ fluid flow as a means for introducing chemical reactants to relatively fixed catalyst pellets. But these catalyst pellets fracture into particles, which deleteriously impacts processing efficiency.
Not only can these particles damage processing equipment and interfere with reaction products, but ordinary environmental regulations require that they be filtered out of a processing fluid prior to discharge into the environment. Moreover, fractured catalyst pellets must be replaced. Therefore, a method for preventing catalyst pellets from fracturing would significantly improve the efficiency of chemical production processes.
Another problem relates to the transport rates of reactants and reaction products to and from a catalyst pellet's catalytic reaction cites. Generally, chemical reactants reach a catalyst pellet's inner-surface area by traveling through the pellets' pores. However, as the size of a pellet increases, the length of its pores increases proportionally. And relatively large catalyst pellets can have pore lengths so great that all of their catalytic reaction sites are not utilized by the reactants. This problem stems from the prior art's methods that employ porous catalyst pellets having characteristic dimensions ranging from a few microns to a few millimeters.